Loving You as Is: Rep Your God

It’s a good thing God’s into projects.

I’m a big believer in being put together; You’re a person, not a house. I don’t do fixer uppers. And I don’t expect you to have a license to remodel me. I don’t need inspections or some kind of certificate to verify my adequacy as a person for you to deal with. Neither are you. At the end of the day, we’re people. We’ve all got something we’re good at; something to work on; someone we miss; and somewhere we’re flawed.

Thank God he’s into projects.

The other day, I had this thought about what a Christian is supposed to look like. Do we wear Sunday suits to go to the bathroom? Are our knees to sexy to show in church? Are Christian men supposed to be embarrassed by their sexual attraction to women they find beautiful and mistake it for lust? Is red lipstick really of the devil? We’ve created all these stereotypes for ourselves that no wonder the rest of the world doesn’t know how to relate to us and vice versa.

A year or so ago, I saw on television some Christian men who owned a tattoo parlor; they’re ministry was reaching the tatted ones and recreating their tattoos to represent Christ. Born again Christian Megan Good dyed her hair purple and Sarah Jakes delivered a powerful message to woman at her church in a figure flattering dress, yet both of these women were scandalized for not being saved enough. Now even Justin Beiber isn’t supposed to get to know the Lord just because of past unwise decisions. I have a book about ministering Christ to emerging generations and the pastor who wrote it shared a story of being vilifyed for just having a random conversation with his gym trainer and was pounced on for not “getting her saved” by his fellow pastors. It seems like wearing red bottoms, wearing a fly white dress that acknowledges your curves, or having a tat, being a famous athlete or celebrity is somehow not godly enough even though we don’t know the person’s walk with the Lord.

I think about this big world we live in that’s filled with so many precious people with so many gifts and aspirations and so many undertones that you could line all of us up and we wouldn’t be able to tell where one color begins and the other ends.

Since when did accepting Christ become a calling card for homogeneity? I mean, don’t get me wrong, when we truly abide in Christ, we take on his thought process and his desire to build our Father’s Kingdom. But last time I checked, me wearing vintage inspired clothing was never intended to lead away from the message of Christ.

This is a call to glorify God for his creativity in creating us, for giving us the gift of song and art, intellect and deduction, sensing and compassion, protest and solutions. Thank God he gave us pink and orange, green and maroon, purple and black, white and yellow.

So this is for you who have felt misunderstood by the world, and specifically other Christians, just because your brand of cookie isn’t Girl Scouts. For you who have pink mohawks, flowers painted on your toes, scriptures on your chest, who love to travel just because and not necessarily for a mission trip, for those who enjoy pop music even if you have to switch the station because of certain lyrics, for those who like social commentary movies like Steve McQueen’s Shame or James DeMonaco’s The Purge:Anarchy, for those who want to see a Christian film of substance that tackles life in the midst of it happening, for those who are not ashamed to admit they went and saw either of the Magic Mike movies or Crimson Peak, don’t let anybody tell you how much you do or don’t love God or how saved you are or aren’t.

You know why? Because HE loves you. Now we all need to be held accountable, but sometimes this isn’t about keeping our brothers and sisters; it’s usually about judgement. Let’s love and respect each other where we are and help each other get to the next step. Isn’t that what family is for?

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One comment on “Loving You as Is: Rep Your God”

Stereotypes exist in for every demographic. How people dress is more about their social culture and personal style than it is religious or spiritual. I think it’s cool if people who want to express themselves more stylishly, but I feel wisdom tells us what’s appropriate for the occasion.